


I was, Became Death

by actualgarbage



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, im sorry, post 2x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualgarbage/pseuds/actualgarbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x16 from Clarke's perspective. Maybe a little ooc for her, but I thought it would be an interesting way for this to go down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I was, Became Death

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I've been seeing a lot of post 2x16 fics from Bellamy's perspective, and so here's one from Clarke's. Just a heads up: I'm hella jetlagged right now (I actually watched the episode on my phone in an airport) and so if there are any errors or if it sucks, blame it on that. Part 2 is on its way maybe.

“May we meet again,” She manages to choke out, the words muffled because her lips are pressed into his shoulder. She wants to stay pressed up against him, secure in his arms, but she knows she doesn’t deserve the relief that his embrace offers.

So instead, she pushes away from him. Their eyes meet for a long (too long, she knows) moment, and then she turns away. If she looks any longer she won’t leave. So she stops looking. Her steps are taken will a false confidence and she only makes it two or three before she hears the sharp exhale behind her. She thinks she hears him mutter the words back to her, but she only falters a second before she’s squaring her shoulders again and walking off towards nowhere.

She knows she could die out in the forest on her own. At this point though, Clarke isn’t really sure how much she cares about that.

Staying means looking at the people she sacrificed everything for. Clarke couldn’t imagine they want her there. Octavia had been furious about TonDC. Jasper hadn’t even looked at her since they found him holding Maya; she wasn’t sure she would ever get his broken expression out of her head. Leaving would make everything easier for them.

Clarke wanted nothing more than the safety of her people, and she knew that couldn’t happen with her there.

 _I am become death_ , she’d said only weeks before.

 _God,_ had it only been _weeks_ since she’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Bellamy watching the smoke fill the air?

Weeks. Days. Centuries.

It didn’t really matter anymore. Everything hurt So Much, but she wouldn’t lose it.

She still could feel Bellamy’s eyes burning into her back, even though she knew he’d turned away already.

 _I am become death_ , she thought it was truer now than it had ever been before. She had destroyed worlds. Her only hope was that the last one she’d ever have to shatter would be her own.

She’d bear it so they didn’t have to.

So _Bellamy_ didn’t have to. They might have pressed that button together, but Clarke had been the one to come up with the plan. She hoped he knew this was on her; hoped that by leaving she’d take his guilt and replace it with the kiss she’d left burning on his cheek.

She had to stop thinking about that, though.

Clarke focused only on the rhythm of her feet on the path until the tree line, until that boulder, until the river. Short goals.

Warriors don’t mourn losses until their war is over, and Clarke would be fighting the rest of her life just to stay away- she couldn’t hurt anyone else. So with every footfall instead of the pound of leather soles against dirt and leaves she heard only a promise that her absence would bring peace with it.

She walked.

She didn’t stop.

Her feet started to bleed, and the thoughts she was suppressing so strongly began forcing themselves on her. Her mental state was weakening, and she fell into a daze.

The pacing of her feet turned into an echo of the names.

For those she didn’t have names for (the grounders, the innocent children in the mountain, hell, she might as well count all those on the ark, too. If she’d warned them then maybe things would have gone differently) she counted as a tally mark in her head.

She walked for days and days and maybe years it seemed before her legs gave way.

 _I’m going to die here_ , she thought, her body tingling from over exhaustion (dehydration, grief, starvation- they all probably had a hand in her demise too).

 _I don’t deserve to die_ , was the follow up thought.

Her lifeless body lay still on the ground but her mind came swirling back into action. Her thoughts were a drunken rush of names and faces of all of the people she couldn’t save.

She’d made her choices.

Now she had to _live_ with them.

She _had_  to suffer for it.

Somehow, her body found the strength to half crawl; half drag her to a stream. The water was cold and unforgiving, so Clarke lay down in the middle of it. She stayed on her back and looked up to the leafy sky to find that the green she was used to was lighter and tinged yellowy-orange.

She thinks about her father- how he would have loved earth.

(She could have probably saved him too. She has no idea how, but since she’s decided to carry the blame for everyone, his life might as well be counted as her fault.)

Wells wouldn’t have been able to shut up about the way the sky looked like it was on fire, now. He’d always talked about the way that seasons changed on earth (earth skills was his best subject).

Maybe if she could have helped Charlotte then he could see the deciduous masterpiece that was soon to be the ceiling of her tomb.

Hours she spends lying in the stream, drifting in and out of a hazy consciousness full of self-loathing and mental berating.

She wants to die (She probably will) but she won’t let herself.

 _The princess is too stubborn even now,_ she startles at that thought because it doesn’t sound like a thought. It sounds like Bellamy.

She chuckles then. It comes out as more of a strangled sort of breath (sounds more like choking than laughing). Clarke isn’t sure why, but she thinks that the medical side of her finds the fact that she’s having delusions from the exhaustion and malnutrition to be hysterical.

What’s left of her mind thinks to point out that it’s _Bellamy_ that she’s hallucinating, the last voice she hears to carry her to the grave.

But none of that matters because what’s left of her brain also happens to have enough logic to shut those thoughts down- only thoughts about hatred and pain for her.

So it’s a chant of the names and Oppenheimer that lull her into the stupor and the sickly sleep she somewhat knows she won’t wake up from and she doesn’t care because she’s still gone and her people are safe because of it.

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts?? Comments?? typos?? I'm serious about the typos thing. I'm barely awake right now but I had to get this out of my system. I'm sorry.


End file.
